In recent years there has been a steady increase in cancerous diseases in Western industrial nations. For example, roughly 23,000 men and 29,000 women a year develop colonic and rectal cancer in Germany, the risk of disease rising gradually with age. Malignant lymphomas constitute about 5 percent of all cancer cases, about 9,000 persons a year developing non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in Germany—with an upward trend. Breast cancer even affects about 10 percent of all women in Western industrial nations.
Methods hitherto known for treating cancerous diseases aim above all at early recognition of the illness and at surgical methods or selective destruction of tumor cells. These methods have the disadvantages that they do not permit effective prophylaxis against the genesis of the cancerous disease and that treatment for example by chemotherapy involves very considerable side effects for the patient.
Accordingly, it is the problem of the present invention to provide a vaccine against cancerous diseases that makes it possible to effectively prevent cancerous diseases and thus clearly reduce the risk of such diseases.